


Weave a Circle

by Tyellas



Series: History is hard to know [3]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Cannibalism, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Ensemble Cast, Environmentalism, Epistolary, Feminism, Furiosa comic fix-it, Gen, Miscarriage, POV First Person, Psychological Horror, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Retcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 17:03:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 19,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4229832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the depths and stacks of the Vault: Miss Giddy's diary. One woman's journey through the apocalypse, her path to the Vault, and her life with the Wives under the Immortan's thumb. When the Vault receives an improbable guard, Imperator Furiosa, Miss Giddy needs to win Furiosa's good will - before the Immortan's harshness destroys five young women. </p><p>A feminist retcon of the notorious Furiosa comic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amidst the re-ordering of the Citadel, after the Fury Road, Toast opens an item from the Vault's library: Miss Giddy's concealed diary.

Toast had been talking with her mouth full of vegetable stew in a Citadel mess hall when the throwback began. “None of us are ‘in charge’, we’re a Council together. Next Council’s tomorrow, all you need to do is — hi, Furiosa.” She glanced up. “What’s wrong?

Furiosa looked set and cold. Toast’s hadn’t seen her so harsh and remote since she’d stood guard in the Vault. The new Citadel petitioners melted away from Toast’s table, leaving the two of them alone.

Furiosa spoke quietly. “The History Man that Max brought in found this in the Vault’s books. He says it was Miss Giddy’s.” Furiosa handed Toast a small, flat item.

“A book? But — she came up from the Wretched. She had hardly anything.”

Toast took the book into her hands. It was on the small side, a faded pink cover marked with pastel Before-time creatures. Toast’s gut contracted. The handwriting on the cover took her back to the bad, prison days of the Vault. “She wrote on this. That’s her writing…what does it say?”

“I can’t read it.” Furiosa went on. “I can read, but I can’t make out the writing inside.”

Toast had wondered about Furiosa and reading. This wasn’t the time, not with the strange book searing her fingers. She flipped it open. “It’s… cursive. A very old way of writing. She showed us.” Toast squinted. It was difficult, crabbed, but she could make it out.

Furiosa shook her head. “Too much for me.”

“Did History say anything else?” He had to have. He never shut up.

Furiosa sighed, impatiently. “One of his wordburgers. _Secret women’s business_ , he said.”

Toast stood. “Let’s find some decent light and I’ll read it aloud.”

Furiosa stepped back. “I don’t — no. If you can read it, tell me if you find anything important.”

Toast opened its last page and saw what was there. By the time she had recovered, Furiosa had left.

Capable was near. When Toast showed her the book, she flipped through it the same way Toast had. Then, they stared at each other for a moment.

“We’ve got to read this.” Capable closed it. “Together.”

Without saying anything more, they dashed together for stairs that would get them out. Fleeing, like Furiosa had. Going upstairs, to the gardens. Where Cheedo and the Dag lived. To find a place to read it where there weren’t any Citadel walls.


	2. Chapter 2

Today, a stack of old volumes brought to the Vault by the Citadel’s master contained this treasure. A blank book, only slightly yellowed. With a PENCIL slotted in its side – pens have dried out into uselessness. I have a journal again, for the first time since the world ended.

It is selfish of me to keep it. But I have not had such a treasure for so long, and I have so much to write. Even my own skin is nearly filled. For now, I will start with how I came to be here, surrounded by beauty and despair, with a no-longer-blank book in my withered hands.

* * *

The day the Citadel took me, I had no desire to go.

The pair of us were called The History People by the Wretched at the base of the Citadel. The Citadel denies that there is civilization down there, where the desert Wasteland abuts the base of the Citadel formations. But the dust of the Wretched was far from the worst place we had been. We had come there seeking healing for one of our number, which the Citadel had denied. When it became clear that wanderers were trapped amongst the Wretched, we made the best of it. Our shared work gave us a purpose, even shade privileges.

As a rule, Alan and I kept all the children we minded together, for greater security. Right before the Citadel took me, on the ground, some poor feral children had been molested. Suddenly angered, the Wretched came together and meted out bloody Wasteland justice against the accused, and the crowd was thinned of some new arrivals and old cripples. It seemed sensible to talk to the children about where babies come from, staying safe, and the like, and to do this separately.

That morning, I watched Alan take on his History Man gravitas as he called the youngsters to order. Then, he took the boys off near the slumping, broken Citadel mesa that housed their mechanics, their machines, and their cruel Treadmill. I stayed in our usual spot.

My little group was near the base of the main mesa, capped with green, sculpted with a skull, death and life in one. Overhead, shuttles connected the towers, rattling occasionally. If anyone descended from those heights and caverns, it was an occasion. Usually for lamentation.

Twelve little girls clustered about me and a helpful teenager, who I called Rabbit. These children’s’ parents could afford to give us some water, bush tucker, or what we euphemistically called “protein” to mind their offspring during the day. Our main task was ensuring they returned to their parents in one piece, though we did our best to teach them. Other girls hovered beyond our tight circle, seeking safety and the ineffables all children need. They had learned to be quiet, and to slip away in good time. Rabbit and I pretended not to see them.

The twelve official students were giggling as I drew the outline of a uterus in the sand with a finger, upside-down to my view. “You all have one of these inside you — here.” I tented my gnarled hands in a triangle on my abdomen. “And this is where babies will grow.”

To my right, a girl asked, “Are you going to have a baby?”

Rabbit and I both laughed. “No, I’m much too old. When your hair turns grey, you stop having babies.” Remember, these were children I was teaching.

On my left, the sleekest, prettiest little girl hugged me with one arm and declared, “I’m going to grow babies. I’m going to be one of the Immortan’s wives. My daddy said so!”

The shyer ones twiddled their toes in the dust. The pretty child’s father was the Fleshmaster, one of the chief merchants of the Wretched — if you had a dead body to spare. She had grown sleek on choice cuts of long pig. I would say she was the apple of her father’s eye. But there are no apples, any more. Rabbit clapped her hands sharply and pointed, encouraging them to pay attention.

“If you want to do that, child, you’ll want to know about this. See this picture? See how it has two ears?” I tapped the ground to draw her eye. “They have a pretty name. Fallopian tubes.”

Suddenly, Rabbit grabbed my arm and shook me. “Up! Up! War ‘oys!” she breathed. She was right. Two War Boys from the Citadel were striding amongst the Wretched, bare ghosts during the blazing day. War Boys on the ground meant bullying at the bare minimum. Wisely, Rabbit covered her harelip with her hand.

Somebody was pointing them our way, selling me out within our hearing. “Right there. She’s the History. The old one.” The War Boys tossed something to a skin-and-bones man and strode directly to us.

The extra girls had already fled. The students scuttered behind me. As if I could do anything. I lumped myself up from the ground and forced my best Forbidding Crone voice. “What’s this about?”

Two skull-faces grinned at me, their eye sockets black in the sun. “Your lucky day. You’re coming to the Citadel.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m an old woman. Besides, I can’t come now.”

One of them gaped, going from a skull to a clown. “But…you want to come to the Citadel. Every one of you wants to get up in our Citadel. Right?”

“I have responsibilities. Do you have more information for me?”

My bluff failed with the other one, who said, “Big words. Lots of talk. Perfect.” He stooped and swooped me up in a fireman’s carry, knocking the breath out of me, then started off. His friend fell in.

Over his shoulder, I saw the cannibal’s daughter scream in fury. “That’s my History Woman! You can’t have her!” Rabbit grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back while she shrilled, “My daddy will find you and eat you! He’ll eat you, eat you, eat you!” Then, she burst into tears. The other girls began to whimper, some hiding their faces, others clenching their fists.

My abductor’s lean arms were strong as spring steel, and his friend grabbed both my wrists in one fist. I managed to wheeze, “Rabbit! Tell what happened! Keep them together until sundown! And keep my jacket!” Poor good Rabbit waved, picked up the desperately worn anorak, and pulled the children to her.

The crowd vanished in front of us. Instead of crossing to the Treadmill drop on the mechanics’ side, two rappel ropes were dangling at the main mesa’s base, up to some unseen pulleys. With a practiced air, the War Boys kicked their booted feet into rope stirrups, then called up with wild whoops. I closed my eyes for the terrifying ascent.

I have been prisoner and servant of the Citadel ever since. And every day I wonder when I will see the cannibal’s daughter again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our diarist ascends through the layers and hierarchy of that savage place, the Citadel.

The inside of the Citadel was as much of a shock as the rope journey up. I was dragged from hard desert sunlight into near darkness and hustled along, stumbling and flinching. Sun-blinded, all I could see were ghostly white faces. Terrible stinks arose and faded: my captors’ distinct reek, an unholy ferment of diesel and never-washed clothing, was a constant.

My takers soon shoved me into a space with some grudging lighting. It was long and narrow and changed from meter to meter with stations for anaesthesia-free surgery, body modification, and blood transfusions directly from humans hung like bags. The rancid petroleum smell of Citadel bodies saturated the air.

Someone astounding rolled over to us. I looked at my first plump man in many years. He wore the contents of a pilfered infirmary in a leather apron, and an extremely jaded look. “Whatcha got?”

“Special delivery for the Immortan. Needs a clean baseline health pass to go past the Green Thumb gate. Priority.”

He returned my look and frowned. “Who’s this Wretched? Is he granny-banging now?”

I cleared my throat. “I am Sophia Giddy. And if you reject me, I’ll happily return below.”

“A talker!” He leered at the War Boys who had abducted me. “This is that thing for the Wives, huh?”

I was manhandled back to a table in the middle of the space for an examination. There was no privacy – quite the contrary: I was surrounded by the ghostly, ghastly crowd. I stripped myself rather than be undressed by force. Everyone took a step back. Even the doctor was nonplussed. “Crikey. That’s different,” he said. I was grateful for my History, the words and phrases inked over most of my body.

My captors were surveying this process carefully, and one asked, “Those tats meant to be wires?”

“They’re words.”

The plump doctor was looking me over with a small flashlight, barking notes to an assistant. “Open your mouth. Throat clean. Breathe. Reduced lung capacity but could be worse. Eyes wide. Oh ho, this one isn’t missing a trick. Save the dirty looks and show me your feet. Ugh. Now, spread ‘em, Granny. Wider! No fungus, genitals OK, benign skin cancers only. Osteoporosis progressing.” His hands roved over me, ungloved, and I flinched. “Saggy, old, used up. But no lumps, no bumps. Oh – wait. I may have found a lump. Can’t send her up with a lump. Or can I?”

My taller captor said, “She’s just old, Organic. She’s the oldest woman in the world and she knows everything!”

No one stopped me from dressing while the doctor named his bribe for judging me to be of passable health. I was distracted from the final negotiations by a small pull on my arm. A ghost of a child was behind me. I still count by years; I would have said he was three. “Mum?”

“G’wan, pup, scram!” The doctor shoved him aside.

The crowd growled. “Don’t you touch our Pup,” blustered one of my captors.

The doctor ignored him. His assistant dropped a chain and tag over my head. “Priority on. If she’s a keeper, we’ll do the burn later. If she doesn’t know anything after all, bring her back to me. I could use some practice…”

I followed my captors with alacricity, feeling very motivated for whatever was coming next.

A jumble of walking the Citadel’s labyrinth and waiting in dark corners followed. Increasingly sinister personages were consulted along the way. At last, we were deemed worthy of an audience. My captors became excited as we were ushered into a long, dark room.

A series of metal tables had been drawn together to make something like a conference space. Around the edges lounged a range of brutes, with the laziness of military men off duty, each shadowed by several child-servants. The long table was headed by a once-muscular man run to fat, with a wild shock of white-yellow hair, and the hollows of his eyes darkened, like the War Boys. I could not see the details of his outfit in the dimness, which dialled down my poor vision further. His presence sent my captors into raptures. “Immortan Joe!” they cried, dropping to their knees and giving him a cross-like sign.

His voice was resonant and deep. “Rise, my War Boys. I hear you have brought me what I asked.” The War Boys fell over each other to tell the story of capturing me. He heard them out and looked me over. “My Boys found you looking after children. The oldest woman in the world…I can believe it. They said you were called History Woman.”

I lifted my chin. “That is what they call me among the Wretched.”

He harrumphed. “They tell me you are covered in history. Show me.” I was marched over, and I extended one arm for his perusal – and bafflement. My history is a shorthand, each of the hundreds of tattoos a words or phrase that triggers a memory. He would have had to ask, and the Immortan asks nothing.

“Not chrome, but sufficiently metal. What did you do before my Era began?”

Usually, when I met one of my rare contemporaries, we asked each other, “What did you do before the end of the world?” And we would laugh, if we could, at how incongruous our answers seemed now. “Masters in Arts, Victoria University. I was taking a sabbatical from my Ph.D , working at ECU at the time of our… global misfortune.”

“Masters of Arts in what unnecessary thing? Marketing? Public relations? Basket-weaving?” Only one or two present got the joke, but everyone laughed dutifully.

I winced. “Nineteenth-century English literature.” Basket weaving would have been a far better preparation for the Wasteland.

Immortan Joe lounged back. “Then give us…hmmm…a poem.” The toughs rearranged themselves somewhat, expecting amusement – probably in the form of me being beaten, five minutes later.

I ran a finger over my right arm for ideas. One name jumped out. PORLOCK. Perhaps the dream-breaker would disrupt this nightmare. I inhaled and began.

_In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree,_

_where Alph, the sacred river, ran, through mountains measureless to man, down to a sunless sea._

_So twice five miles of fertile land with walls and towers were girded round,_

_And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills…_

I looked at him during the long poem. The Immortan was listening, and with him listening, the room was silent. He even had a nod for:

_And ‘midst this tumult Khubla heard from afar, ancestral voices, prophesying war!_

My cracked old voice did scant justice to the words, but I went on to the end.

_And all should cry, beware, beware, his flashing eyes, his floating hair!_

_Oh weave a circle round him thrice, and close your eyes in holy dread,_

_For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of paradise._

I lifted my hands. “That was by Samuel Coleridge.”

Everyone turned to Immortan Joe. “The milk of paradise,” he said, almost to himself. He pounded the table. “Yes! The arts of the past to glorify our future. Your position is enviable, History Woman. You will teach my Wives.”

I blinked. “Teach them poetry?”

“And literature. Art. Culture. Enough of our history for them to value their position. But no more. Do you understand me?”

He gestured munificently. “You will live in the Dome, safe and clean, breathing pure air, drinking the finest Aqua-Cola and eating the same food my Wives do. There is even a library. You will teach them by day and keep them company by night. You will cheer them and elevate them. Most important, you will reassure them of my continued regard.” Surrounded by armed men, I was not truly taking this in. Nobody was asking for my agreement. Overcome by their success, my two captors had gone back to their knees on each side of me.

I heard another voice as old as mine snap, “You’re asking for trouble, Joe,” he said.

“I WILL have more sons.”

“Then keep some of the old Wives to look after them.”

“Mediocre! I don’t see you surrounded by beautiful women, Kalashnikov. They require special handling.”

“Then send your new babysitter to the nursery and let’s finish our business, Kubla Khan.”  

One does not go anywhere quickly in the Citadel, I learned. I had time along my way to contemplate my many failures. I had been too craven to throw myself out of my captor’s grip on the rappel, too compliant in the ghastly hospital, too overwhelmed to even attempt negotiating with the Immortan. I should, oh, I should have hugged that child. Now I was torn from my partner and my people, in the hands of men who would not ask when they could take, to find that Kalashnikov was all too right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The full text of Kubla Khan: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173247  
> Thanks to ssstrychinine (http://ssstrychnine.tumblr.com) for valuable beta reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The surreal, beautiful world of the Wives and the first half of Miss Giddy's story.

Before being taken to the Wives, I was allowed to scrub, and told the Wives’ names and stages of pregnancy. The only other information deemed necessary was that the Wives were allowed to take the air in the upper gardens sometimes, but to go no further. Their limits, I was told, would be mine. Could I, I asked, return to the ground when my duties finished each day? They shook their heads and gabbled about quarantine and purity.

In the highest level of the Citadel, all the tasks are in the hands of the Green Thumbs. We Wretched thought the War Boys were insanely devoted, but they are tepid admirers compared to the fanatic Green Thumbs. They see themselves as having achieved Valhalla on earth in a paradise of green plants, spraying water, and the Immortan’s goddesses, and they would rather jump off the top to their death than descend otherwise, or betray the Immortan. They went masked and draped against the fierce sun, and it was hard to tell one from the other.

My heart fell even further when I saw the door where I was taken – a solid bank vault door, with a guard at each side. I merited having the door swung open for me, and entered yet another world.

A world of beauty.

I registered little but light, cleanliness, and the shimmer of a limpid pool. Arranged around the pool, prettily posed, were five radiant girls. Their carefully composed expressions warped when they saw me.

“Sacred Wives! The Immortan sends you your promised gift: this History Woman! She will teach you and look after you, and live with you here. Blessed is the Immortan.”

“Blessed is the Immortan,” they repeated, very dubiously. The chaperoning Green Thumb nodded and left. For the first time, I heard the air-sucking seal of the vault door behind me.

I came close, trying to see them clearly against the light. “My name is Miss Giddy. And you are…Angharad…Tidda…Capable…Lolly…and…Toast?”

A petite, perfect brown girl with a small belly raised her hand first and said she was Toast. She had a mischevious look, prepared to be entertained, but not malicious. Lolly was tall, lanky, with dark, gold-streaked hair matching her golden skin. She was the spitting image of the beautiful Indigenous Arts P.A. who had once sat a desk over from me at ECU – except for the unbalanced glitter in her eyes. Tidda seemed to be her sister, softer and darker and the most pregnant of the lot. Dark blonde Angharad also read as trouble: her temples and forehead were scarred with numerous slashes, and her expression was ferocious. Beside her, the Pre-Raphaelite maiden who had to be Capable was schooled and expressionless.

I had expected a jaded harem. But these were teenagers, dressed up for a Greek play in scanty white drapery. I knew that “appropriate” had changed after the end of the world, but my bones were still shocked.

There was a moment’s silence. Finally, I tried, “Now that I am here, you must tell me what to do.”

They were taken aback. “We tell you what to do?”

“I am your guest.” Manners when receiving hospitality transferred well from Before-Time high teas to strange post-apocalyptic settings.

Angharad looked at the others, warily. “We can show you around.” For post-apocalyptic construction, the space was magnificent. Sandstone walls glowed in the late sun, admitted through an arcing half-dome of glass, the long window bordered with plants and an espaliered fruit tree or two. The main room’s center held a limpid pool. To one side sat a Steinway, with a mostly-intact chandelier above. Stacks of books filled the walls in bohemian disorder. The chaos and stink of the lower Citadel seemed a universe away.

There were some twelve cots, upstairs on a mezzanine and down inside bedrooms. The harem was at less than half of its capacity. “You can have this room,” I was told. It was a small cell, closed off with a curtain, with its own cot, closest to the door.

“I don’t want you to go into our room,” said Tidda, softly. I nodded.

“What is it like, as the Wives of the Immortan? Do you go to his quarters?”

“No, he comes here.” They all looked anywhere but at me.

“Do you get messages? Can you send letters?”

“No,” said Angharad. “We’re just here, now. Where do you come from?”

“That…is a story.”

“A Tell! Please, Tell,” said Lolly. “We’re so bored, I could cut my own throat.”

I told them a simpler version of this story.

***

I say the world ended on December 11th, 2019. A Wednesday before Christmas. High energy prices, water tariffs, right-wing movements, and terrorism were creating tension throughout the Northern Hemisphere, and Australia was along for the ride. It all seemed like the usual bad news, despite the frequent airline flight cancellations, and I had other preoccupations. Six months prior, after a bad break-up, I’d dropped out of my Ph.D program in Melbourne for a change of scene in Perth. I had picked up a year’s contract covering an arts administator’s maternity leave at Edith Cowan University. Perth was all right. By December my flatmate had become my gay best friend. I knitted pink hats and kept up on the international news, though not as much as I should have - it was depressing. I rode a bicycle by the banks of the Swan River while wearing vintage dresses. On a good day, I fancied myself Audrey Hepburn in 2019. I was twenty-seven.

I was working late on campus, processing a payroll so my co-workers could go Christmas shopping the next day. Words that barely seem meaningful, now.

My iPhone chimed. I had a message from my flatmate, Travis. He was thrilled I was on campus and wanted to meet me at my building’s door. It was important. I was surprised when he showed up in a science department van with his boyfriend, Alan, a short, sun-baked geologist, and a straight couple, also both scientists. Apparently, someone in the Physics department had received a heads up about a military escalation. They shocked me by saying they wanted to raid the arts building’s supply cupboards and emergency stashes before running for the countryside. They’d take me, too, if I wanted, for friendship’s sake, but it would help if I opened the cupboards to them. The science buildings, they said, had already been stripped, and the grocery stores were “chokka”. I checked my social media: one look at the messages bouncing around frightened me into saying yes.

I made them promise that if we weren’t glowing in the dark by Sunday, we’d bring everything back. They refused to stop anywhere, just headed north, fast enough to get every traffic ticket possible. I was even more horrified when, an hour outside Perth, we pulled over at a dairy to try and get more supplies. When it turned out to be closed, the other couple broke in! They smashed the shop window! Al joined in, too. Travis and I stared at each other in shock while they emptied half the place, alarm ringing. We were having a screaming argument about this as we drove off. Suddenly, the radio changed to the Emergency Broadcast System.

That was that. Travis handed me a stolen ice cream. We ate ice cream, weeping, as we passed an RAAF base, howling with sirens.

There were eight nuclear strikes in Australia four hours later, obliterating our coastal cities and Uluru.

The world ended, but life as we once knew it took years to wind down. We had driven north with a destination. Al was the black sheep of a large country family with a large farm in remote Murchison – Kulurda Station. Station life is off the grid – by which I mean, it ran on independent power - so the farm lights stayed on as long as the solar panels were whole. Even with EMP disruptions to many electric devices there were still short wave radios, Kindles and tablets, record turntables. Our two geologists, who could shoot, had a say on the station. The rest of us were accepted as hands of all work. There was the family, and twenty extras like us. Stuck in a guest house with another family, and limited media, we shared our knowledge in long conversations. I taught the station children to read. I also learned to splint a leg, skin a beast, defuse a harasser, and brew ethanol gasoline from eucalyptus wood chips. I had time to cry at night.

It was a strange few years. Some country towns, isolated and well-resourced, continued nearly unchanged, with police departments and the like. Then a truckload of refugees or a biker gang would come through, looting or worse, and civilization would be torn down a bit further.

We had seven years of nuclear winter, but the cold that killed and killed in the Northern Hemisphere sustained much of Australia with weather that was only wet and cool. By the third time Kulurda bloomed, I could see the beauty there. Our turn came when the skies cleared for an endless nuclear summer. “The Big Dry” became “The Nuke Dry”. Fires consumed the bush, but no rain came to help renew it. Dust storms spread from Australia’s heart, spreading nuclear fallout to new areas, and sea levels rose quickly. And water source after water source failed. That was truly when civilisation’s remnants began to fade. The station had deep wells and food and eucalyptus ethanol– and, inevitably, we became a target.

Three of us made it out of Kulurda when the raiders came. I’m just glad it was Alan and Travis who got me out. I could not speak about what happened there for five years. Not until we wrote the Kulurda Tell, and moved on together.

***

I did not get much further with my story that day. Their questions showed their minds were alive. What was EMP? A campus? A geologist? I had owned _how many_ dresses? They agreed that breaking into a dairy was a terrible sin, and asked if there were Milking Mothers in there. By the time I was exhausted with answers, they were prepared to tolerate my presence, and I was reconciled towards being there for a time. There would, I thought, be opportunities to descend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to ssstrychinine (http://ssstrychnine.tumblr.com) for valuable beta reading!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Immortan and his entourage visit. The rest of Miss Giddy's story is a welcome distraction afterwards - road wars, euthanasia, Wasteland Bingo, and all.

The next morning, I was the first up. The Vault was silent, the morning light heavy and dry. Somewhere, a ventilator hummed. I heard the sealed door open, and two Green Thumbs came in, one to tend plants, and the other to lay down a gigantic tray with a shared breakfast for us. Having previously had little to do, the young women were late risers. Eventually, they came down and ate. Then, they hovered, chatting, looking at me expectantly.

I thought I had better start with something lesson-like. A reprise of _Kubla Khan_ was an easy choice. I asked them to sit and listen, and recited it again (in far better voice, after slaking six months' underhydration). “Can each of you share with me what you think about the poem?”

Toast immediately said, “The words all lock together. They pull you in.”

I grinned in delight. “That’s right! You’re hearing the rhyme and the meter.”

After some comments about how it was nice (Tidda), it was about somewhere else (Lolly), it was pretty (Capable), and she was still deciding (Angharad) I tried a more leading question, repeating a few lines.

_A damsel with a dulcimer, in a vision, once I saw._

_She was an Abysinnian maid, and on her dulcimer she played, singing of Mount Abora._

_Could I but revive within me her symphony and song…_

“What do you think the damsel is singing about the mountain?”

Toast ruffled her hair. “The words are arranged different, but, they still fit?”

Tidda spoke up, mournfully. “She wants to go home.”

“Yes! She wants to go home. To her land,” said Lolly.

Capable looked to the side. “Maybe she’s singing because she can’t go home. She can never go home.”

Angharad mused, “I would like to find her music.” She looked at and through me, into Coleridge’s vistas.

No, this was not a happy harem. I creaked to the floor to sit cross-legged with them.

“Shall I tell you how the poem was written? It’s an interesting story.”

We had the Person from Porlock, then, carrying on with Coleridge, I began the _Rime of the Ancient Mariner,_ a great favorite of both Wasteland campfires and lost English 101 courses. After I had told them about the poem and given them a grizzled introduction to the Mariner, the girls were giggling. I had only reached the second verse about the Bridegroom when the great door sucked open again.

In came the Immortan. Lolly flung herself at him. “Blessed Immortan!”

“Miss me, girls? I see school is in. What do you think?” Though Lolly was hanging on him, he glanced at Angharad.

She smiled in his direction, mistily. “It’s wonderful.”

“Look what my Green Thumbs grew for you.” All avuncular munificence, he pointed at the servant behind, who carried a dish of tangerines. He handed them around, ruffling hair, pinching Tidda’s peachy cheek. I didn’t get one, but I did get his sharp regard.

It had taken me all of this time to stand up from the stone floor. “It is good to see that you value your new position. You shall have a classroom, a board and chairs. What do you think of the library?” I thought it was stacks of mostly-junk that would take me weeks to sort for anything useful, and I hoped to not be here that long. “I haven’t had the chance to look.” I couldn’t help asking, “Do you have any tablets still live?”

He laughed. “Maybe I do, if things continue well.” He ruffled Toast’s hair. “I will return tonight. Stay frisky, Lolly.”

When he was gone, everyone but Tidda tossed their tangerines back in the dish.

I saw that evening why they lost their appetites. We did not receive the Immortan alone – we hosted an entourage. Two medics, including the loathsome doctor, a bare-chested Imperator clearly relishing the privilege, and a peculiar pair of a tall, well-made man gaping like an idiot and a bright-eyed homunculus in a modified wheelchair.

The doctor licked his lips. “Okay girls! Let’s see who’s ripe and ready! Oh, hey, Granny. Try not to get too jealous tonight.”

I went up on the mezzanine stair, as far out of the way as possible.

Tidda came and sat beside me, silently. “What’s happening?”

“The Organic Mechanic checks us first. I try to stay away from his sons.” She pointed to the pair.

“First before…what?”

Everyone was quiet as the three non-gravid women were examined. Two of them were judged to be ovulating, and the Immortan decided to amuse himself with all three. Most of the entourage departed. What the Immortan ordered and did next sounded like some faded, data-corrupted clip of pornography – the kind Australia used to ban as cruelty to women.

Toast silently came and leaned on a wall near us.

Lolly ran up. “Ha, I was first. I told you he likes me best. Are you Telling more?”

“Not yet. We should wait for the others.”

I opened my mouth, but before I could speak, three different hands clamped my arm, my shoulder, and my leg. “Don’t say any more.”

Finally, Capable and Angharad chimed a good night, sounding painfully young. We all stayed frozen as the Immortan and the doctor, now known to me as the Organic Mechanic, departed. The others scrambled to go down.

Lolly looked up at me. “Aren’t you coming?” I could hear splashing from the pool downstairs.

“Don’t they want privacy?”

“It’s all right,” someone called.

I went down, averted my eyes from the bathing girls, and we talked about what they had endured. Lolly, in one of her lightning turns, spat in my face and lashed out at me for not having a clue. Angharad, trying to keep the peace, said it wasn’t so bad. Capable, pale and fatigued, had had enough and asked if I would finish my Tell. Hearing the tremble in her voice, I agreed, despite the extreme lateness. We huddled around a lantern, tighter together than the night before, and I finished telling how I came to the Citadel.

***

Three, two men and one woman, turned out to be a good number for survival. For two years, we had a vehicle, the old science department van. But fluids and parts became so difficult to scavenge that when bandits wanted it, we ran before they could change their minds. We must have hidden in every dry irrigation ditch from Geraldton to the southern coast. We swapped roles constantly, changing which of us was our leader and negotiator to match the strangers we encountered. On the road, I learned to scan for threats, improvise water, entertain a campfire, and, in a pinch, offer up my body with a veneer of willingness. We needed every resource we could to survive the Wastelands, and I wanted to pay the debt of Kulurda. We shared everything we had, including our sense of the absurd. Whenever we came to a new settlement we played Wasteland Bingo, and it wasn’t dinnertime without grub races (winner got the biggest one) or some mutant limericks.

We did make it back to see the ruins of Perth, and to learn what remained of the country. An outpost well north of Melbourne, Burning Seed, sounded like where we belonged. Our great adventure was to try and get there. After the Ayers Rock nuclear strike and sea-level rises that came and went, central Australia had become a waste of vast, poisoned salt flats. Caravans tried crossing, occasionally, and we joined one. Our group was met halfway across the salt by the fleeing remains of Burning Seed, trying to outrun raiders, and we all turned tail together. Some Burning Seed second generation boys, in their fathers’ art cars, did a suicide run so we could make it.

These journeys took years. After the Burning Seed road war and the deaths that followed, my hair went white. That was when I started tattooing myself. My companions thought it was an excellent idea and did the same. Our tattoo cues helped us hold onto the precious parts of the past, while making us look uncanny– a good defense, in the Wasteland. The three of us had grown from best mates to chosen family to tribe.

Our groups limped back to the West Coast and tried to settle. Despite good intentions and civilized souls, our resources were thin. The Burning Seed crew had more radiation exposure history, and illness took many of them. We three became restless. Alan had Kulurda’s red earth in his blood still, Travis wasn’t well, and I wanted to help him. An opportunity arose. Some ambitious boys chafing in the new settlement took us north as their guides in a van. They were trying for another outpost, the Citadel in the mineral-rich Pilbara. It was a ride, a direction, and if we made it to the Citadel, maybe there’d be help for Travis. He was hoping for a surgeon, and the Citadel had a reputation for healing its people.

It’s said you can’t go home again, and we shouldn’t have tried. The country got worse and worse, hammered by the unending summer. Roads we had once travelled had faded out, broken or lost under sand dunes. The few people we ran across who weren’t at trading posts shot first. Alan begged us to try Kulurda Station, but when we reached it, it was abandoned, treeless, cow skulls and sand drifts. What had once been bushland and river forest was now hard desert. Truly a wasteland. We drove on through the Anthropocene extinction because there was nowhere to stop, hungry, parched, running on eucalyptus fumes.

The Citadel turned out to be real, which was gratifying. We pulled up outside at night, well away, and waited to follow some other vehicles in close. When we pulled up to the Citadel, I won Wasteland Bingo in thirty seconds, a record, while the men tried their luck talking. I stayed back: it did not seem like they welcomed women negotiators.

They took the young men with their van, but we were rejected. Nothing the youngsters said made any difference. We told them to stop trying, then watched them ascend, while Citadel thugs tossed clingers off the Treadmill. The crowd around the Citadel base wouldn’t even let us sit in the shade, at the time.

Travis admitted it was the end of the line for him, and it was time for us to do what we’d talked about: euthanasia.

When the sun went down, we built a fire with the eucalyptus branches we had left, to spend the night talking and singing. Travis decided he wanted to die at dawn. The fire and talk and tattoos attracted the crowd, as the night went on, and we widened the circle. These people weren’t the sophisticates of Burning Seed, but they were alive and curious. Close to dawn, a bearded character turned up who said he’d heard we might have a nice fresh body, and did we want to make a deal? Travis thought this was a perfect final joke, and bargained two weeks’ worth of “protein” for Al and I from the second-tier merchandise at his organ-fueled bug farm. The long pig merchant lent us a good knife for the killing cuts. Myopic as I am, I had to do it: Alan couldn’t see for his tears. I killed my friend, my tribesman, with the rising sun behind me.

That was our start among the people the Citadel call the Wretched. The next morning, we heard the Immortan’s amplified voice booming over the Citadel, and watched the spectacle he created. I never mentioned Wasteland Bingo again. The game was over, and we were not the winners.

We had been there for about seven hundred days when the War Boys came calling, looking for History.

***

My excessive geography had put Lolly to sleep and set Capable yawning. We retired. I lay down, shaken by my own remembrances, reminded me why so many spoke of the Vault as a pampering paradise. It was cold, without a companion beside me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to ssstrychinine (http://ssstrychnine.tumblr.com) for valuable beta reading!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deeper into the Vault, and its lives and losses.

For all that I stood by the Vault window each evening, trying to see down to the Wretched below, I quickly succumbed to fondness of the young women. I call them “young women” when I remember and “girls” the other 98’% of the time.

Angharad was clearly the leader. She bore her graces quietly, saving her stern side to quash Lolly’s worst excesses and for minor clashes with Toast. They were each steely with the conviction of someone young convinced that they are right. Angharad was the one who took to my what-if conversations with the greatest verve. What would you be in the Before time? What would you do if you were living in this story?

 I saw Angharad reading and realized two things — I was SEEING HER READING, and she was holding the book up against her nose, as I do. We talked. She has been here three years. Wives, she said, taught each other to read. Somehow she implied that she’d known how, before. It turns out that she is short-sighted. One of many little things that shows these girls need more care than they are getting. Not that anything can be done for myopia, now.

Lolly was the main musician and had taught the also-talented Capable (a relief to me, with my lack of instrumental talent). She must have been glorious before she came to the Vault. Now, she was twitchy, anxious, spewing hatred one moment, declaring herself the Immortan’s favourite the next, not sleeping for days and then sleeping for a week. Before I came, Tidda was the only one who could keep her behaviour tolerable: she had dulled herself down to try and avoid becoming like her sister. When Lolly’s mind raced, I draw her off to talk to me, a relief to the other girls.

Capable unfolded after I told the second part of my story, and murmured to me about her own mother and their travails. I tried not to favour Capable because she was a fellow talker: cool and profound one moment, fiery and angry the next, always articulate. The post-apocalyptic population does not abound in good conversationalists. The others ascribed this to Capable being from Gastown, a polluted and violent settlement known for its glib-tongued inhabitants.

The remaining four Wives were all close-mouthed about their origins. Tidda hinted darkly that she and her sister, in a terrible piece of repeated history, were stolen from their tribe in the northlands. When I asked Toast if she had a similar background, she only snapped, “No. I was a Wastelander.” Despite her frequent terseness, I took very strongly to Toast, too. Her crisp wit reminded me of Travis.

Angharad was even less forthcoming.

I also tried not to enjoy the company and comforts too much. It was at this time I learned how regrettably incorruptible the Green Thumbs were, and what was expected of me.

My curriculum was still running off my memory banks alone: poetry, Greek myths, some songs, analytic games and guided conversations. This was sufficing for the moment. The Immortan had been a military man when we had the end of the world, and like many undereducated people, he thought that Culture was an insect caught in amber. He pictured girls singing, reading, having happy conversations — the “pictured” phrase is important, as he would come in, watch the lovely arrangement of young women looking occupied, and depart with satisfaction or, once, retire with Angharad to the largest chamber. Oh, Angharad.

Tidda’s time came when I had been sojourning there close to thirty days. The girls prepared as if she was never to be seen again, for it was her third pregnancy. Three tries, and that was all. She would meet one of three fates, depending on how her childbirth went: the Dairy if her child was nonviable or female and she had the gift of milk, the Treadmill if she was dry, or fabled elevation like none before her if she carried a healthy son.

When we relented to the inevitable and pressed a bell to summon our jailer-servants, Tidda was whisked away to the supervision of the Organic Mechanic. I asked to go and was encouraged when this was allowed. When I saw what it was like, I understood why Organic allowed it, with a malicious glint in his eye. It started out all right in a side room, blessedly private, drenched in some raw antiseptic. The birth was as rough as the antiseptic smell.

Tidda was all right, but the child….I leaned in to see a limp red cyclops that, seemingly stillborn, managed some feeble moves. “That’s a new one!” Organic chuckled. ”Usually we get spina bifida.” He watched me for signs of disgust, but I helped with calving at Kulurda after fallout drift. All I was holding back was tears. “Is it a boy?” Tidda asked.

I pressed her hand and said only “No.” For it was neither.

Organic paid no attention to the woman, only to her breasts. “Milker, so some salvage.” Tidda closed her eyes, and refused to open them again.

When I was returned to the Vault alone and bloodstained, with my news, Lolly proceeded to have a monumental breakdown. The other girls did their best to calm her, with me. “At least now we know. Usually we don’t even know,” said Toast. After a night of Lolly’s uninterrupted shrieking and weeping, she was simply taken in the morning. We were told only that she was “gone.”

Without Tidda and Lolly to take care of, the three remaining girls took care of me. They encouraged me to sully their pool with a serious full-body bath. It was marvellous, even though I have never felt so old or ugly as beside these girls, and Toast and Angharad had to give me a good pull to get me out of the pool. A tour of my History tattoos was a useful distraction. Then, in place of my other clothes, they used the light white cotton grown on one of the Citadel peaks to style a dress for me. My pockets had retained a few treasures during my ascent, and these found a new home in a sash. Capable even combed my wild, dry hair in a soft bun.

As a result, I was looking presentable when we had a brief visit from the Immortan. He shocked me by being pleased with how matters had proceeded: a Wife had transferred seamlessly to the Milking Mothers, with less fuss than usual, and an investment-damaging crisis had been averted. “You will attend all my Wives’ births from now on. Should have had you picked up sooner.” I felt sick in my heart — and then I saw Toast’s hopeful face as she stood to one side.

“As for the Wives, my scouts are doing their circuit for additional talent.” A Before-time way to put it, as if these hapless girls were lucky starlets on a television show.

“Any chance of those tablets?”

“Perhaps,” he said, lightly. I looked down. I was being lied to, strung along, falling into the mind-traps that await all prisoners.

With my hair lifted, he saw the nape of my neck. The Immortan shouted out to have my brand arranged, and an attending War Pup scurried out. I looked back up.

“Immortan Joe. Your men were so eager to hand me in. What was I worth?”

“For the sake of my beautiful Wives? Valhalla.”

The ritual death of the Immortan’s warriors, by war or by the Immortan’s hand. Which of the two War Boys had taken that final journey first? The one who went foolish when I said I did not want the Citadel, or the other who, brutish as he was, had defended the Pup? Four young lives in one day, ground down by the Immortan’s word.

Late that afternoon, a _haboob_ blew in.

We all went over to the great window and watched. They had never heard the Arabic name for the great dust storms before. I perused my left arm, my “heart arm”, I called it. This was the arm I could tattoo myself, where I had written the names most important to me, when I began. MUM. POPPY. THALIA. PRES LADIES COLL 00. BIOHAZARD REX. A&T. HONOUR CODE. The last was the rules for our mini-tribe.

With a start, I realized I had been in the Vault for thirty days. The past two days had distracted me from my count. One of our Codes was coming down on me tonight. If you went missing, after thirty days, you were declared dead, to protect and free the others. Besides… you probably were.

I peered down into the storm. The _haboob_ is hellish to endure unsheltered. Al’s family had been sinewy, leathery, capable for generations. He’d been bred for the end of the world. I myself had slowed and withered under the grind of the Wretched. He was probably better off unburdened. That was what I kept telling myself. It was so strange, to be dead, yet so close.

The Vault Door hissed. I was summoned to face the brand.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miss Giddy tries to change the system from within. And learns.

A quiet time followed with the three remaining Wives. The seasons are irregular at best now, but I remember this time as a summer. Toast, Capable, Angharad, and I spent much of it in the gardens, under a grape pergola, looking for all the world like a tableau from ancient Greece, the three Graces – and their tutor-slave.

I found myself calling them “Dear.” But they are become dear to me, and their lives, despite the putative care of the Immortan, are loveless save for each other.

Ruefully, I sorted through the books at last. Lowlights included cookbooks torturous to read, and a slew of imageless books in Afrikaans. Still, some were of value, prize among them an ACS science education package from some unfortunate station’s children.There were a shelf or two of treasures. _Empire of the Sun. Huckleberry Finn._ A Norton’s anthology. An atlas from 1985. _The Last of the Wine. Picnic at Hanging Rock. Ask That Mountain. My Brilliant Career. The Rabbit Proof Fence. The Future Eaters. Things Fall Apart._ Apt and cruel, _The Handmaid’s Tale._ Many older hardbacks on their acid-free paper had endured, _Bullfinch’s Mythology_ the prize among them.

I linger over the books because, _books_ , and because this was a deeply difficult time for Angharad and Capable. They were the focus of the Immortan’s attentions, while he directed his idea of approving pleasantries towards the pregnant Toast.

They usually sailed through their ordeals with all their lovely strength. It was in the relative safety of the next day or two that their suffering emerged. Angharad is angry in her bones. She paces, sleeps little, and her face bears traces of blood. I see the rage in her sometimes in the Immortan’s presence – and he himself triumphs that she _feels_ for him. Capable is chilled and subdued by what she endures. I realized what was happening inside her when she spilled scalding tea on her hand without noticing – she admitted that she simply feels little from the neck down in the days after the Immortan’s visits.

This is why we linger in the gardens, away from where these things happen.

My ugliness has become a shield to the girls, and they cling to my side, especially when Organic is present – I ruffle my hair and work the Forbidding Crone voice to make myself even worse. The Immortan, meanwhile, has but one Before-time witness to his husbandry, and that is me. He is proud; he sees his Vault as a success, and I am as a toy in his Happy Families set. I am only reprimanded about the scald on Capable’s hand and Angharad’s cutting. I receive gifts – books, a gingham-trimmed apron - that’s 45 years too late, but I donned it with an eye to pleasing the Immortan.

I told the girls that they could ask me anything, this being the least I could do for them, and we have had many intimate conversations. Capable asked “anything” first. She had never conceived after six hundred days in the Vault, and was brooding over this. She expected to have another five hundred days or so in the Vault, and then… “What happens to the Wives who are sent out? Did you ever see it, when you were at the Citadel’s base with the Wretched?”

“Yes, twice.” Five had been dismissed in the past two years – the Immortan is going through them quickly, the girls average three to five oldyears here – and we narrowed the names of the ones I had seen down to two.

“The first one hesitated on the ground. Or perhaps her drop was badly timed – we had had no water for several days. She was seized and dragged off. I’d say we never saw her again, but the locks of her hair were for sale. Poor girl.”

“The second one took a look around and simply walked into the desert, head held high. No stopping. Nobody touched her. But then, the _haboob_ was blowing.”

The second one’s decisiveness impressed Capable more than my warnings about what a terrible death it is to die of thirst. If she is sent down, I will tell her to seek Alan - but only then. I am staying close about my friends and tribesman below, seeing how the Citadel uses its people.

Toast’s pregnancy proceeded, and I put forwards my idea. She might give birth in the Vault, without Organic in attendance, just myself, if we all conspired. The girls jumped on this. Capable noted that the Immortan himself had said I should attend their births. If the child was too hapless to live, I would do what was necessary; if it was a passable son, all _lese-majeste_ would be forgiven; and if it was a daughter…

Genetically, a daughter would be less likely to carry deleterious mutations – even an academic failure like myself knew that. I thought that if the Immortan, my aged contemporary, might see a living female child of his, instead of just a corpse discarded by Organic, he might change his mind.

It seemed the child herself joined us in our conspiracy, and coming at a time that suited us. She chose to arrive after a long evening, and was born in the dark before the dawn. None of us left Toast alone for an instant, though we sought to be quiet, and toast muffled her cries. My other clothes, saved since Tidda’s birth, caught Toast’s birth fluids and such. My small sewing kit, one of my two remaining Before-time possessions, neatened the umbilical cord, and the infant was washed in our limpid pool, then wrapped in Toast’s white sarong.

“She really is perfect,” said Toast. They took turns holding the tiny body.

“You have to name her,” I said. They were all startled – then Toast said, “Delta Acrux, from the Southern Cross.” The stars still hung above our dome.

In the morning, I told the servants to bring us the Immortan as soon as could be, and that his healthy child awaited. We had a heart-clenching hour to wait before the man burst in, in a puffing rush, burdened by his ventilation system, several toadies, including Organic, in his train. The Three Graces made a marvellous picture, beaming with pride, holding a rosy-brown piece of infant perfection.

The Immortan’s eyes widened above his respirator, and he thumped his chest. “He’s amazing!”

“She,” I said. “It is a girl.”

There was a dead heartbeat of time. Then my throat was grasped, I was shaken, and the Immortan dashed me to the stone, kneeslamming me. I would have howled, except I was being throttled.

I’d be a dead woman if Angharad hadn’t stepped up and fired her rage at him, a tantrum not unlike the cannibal’s daughter half an oldyear ago. The Immortan sneered, “Keep her, then. But you will never defy me with my own children, ever again.” Then he stormed out, followed by the entourage. Delta had been seized. We could still hear Delta wailing, until the Vault door sealed once more, on sadness and chaos.

That night, the girls looked in, bringing me food. Angharad raged, “I’m glad we did what we did. I’m glad! Now I know how it’s supposed to be.”

Capable looked at my knees. “Oh, that doesn’t look good. Maybe…maybe some cushions?”

Toast gave me a pallid look, and whispered. “Thank you for trying. I – I know it was better -” Then, she fled, streaked with silent tears.

I thanked them and asked them to go. I had to clench my own sides to try and hold in my own raging sorrow.

That’s when I felt a lump. A _Lump_.

I recalled that bastard Organic, in my examination on my first day in the Citadel, saying, “Oh, wait, I found a lump.” He was telling the truth, after all. There are times when it’s useful to have an enemy. I’m prepared to die in my own bile, rather than ask him for help.

After claiming this journal a week ago, I am caught up for the moment. It has been good to have something I can do from my cot. The girls are kind as I recuperate – or try to.

We are out of favour, and I have no idea what comes next.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dag and Cheedo arrive, and the Dag’s irrepressible nature leads to trouble.

Two new Wives have been brought here, abruptly. The way we are never told what is happening is one thing that makes this place such a prison.

The new girls clung to each other when they came in, and the previous inhabitants are women in comparison. Fortuitously, the new pair made the terrifying ascent through the Citadel together. The first new Wife, aptly named The Dag, is a tough, pale beauty with uncanny clear eyes. She defends herself with a veneer of bitchy madness and a trickster’s wit.

The other is the youngest girl to come up here so far – fourteen years? Her name is Cheedo and she is sleek, gold-skinned, dark-haired, high-cheekboned, like one of my lost tribesman Travis’ Maori nieces. The solid family behind her shows, she is so sweet and sane and kind. She is utterly delighted to be here. The Dag and she are fast friends, and Cheedo cheerfully acknowledges her defender, while the Dag is calmer for Cheedo’s expressions of pleasure. I pray that this is not how Tidda and Lolly started out. Neither of them has ever seen a book or a fork. Between the two of them, my work is cut out for me. Angharad and Capable are happy to make friends. Toast, still broken-hearted, hangs back.

Aside from their undeniable beauty, each of them has that something extra Immortan Joe discriminatingly demands in his wives. A charm, a light, a charisma. I wish he didn’t demand it to destroy it, in the end.

I have had no further repercussions – not that any are necessary: everything from my thighs down remains an agony. As a final indignity, somewhere a battered old walker was unearthed for me.

In a blessing for the new Wives, and myself, the Immortan has been seen rarely, and without any…formal…visits. The new brides were presented to him once, then whisked up here. For there is a road war in progress.

I showed the girls how to read the sky outside the dome. Once in a great while, we catch a smoke flare going up, and last night something mechanical was burning profoundly. The dawn was red. Thrash music boomed in the distance, then closer, until it filled the Citadel court. I told them, “If they play when they’re returning, that means the Citadel is victorious.” Cheedo drew the other girls into an impromptu dance party.

We cannot see the Treadmill from our window. Perishing for news, like the History tribesperson I am, I asked the day’s Green Thumb if we could visit the gardens. We were led forth and I grilled the Green Thumbs. The road war had concluded last night with a two-rig collision, one pillaging, one defending, and a massive conflagration a kilometre from the Citadel itself. Only one driver and a handful of crew had walked away, and the surviving War Boys were Witnessing the mass ascension to Valhalla.

It was the first time in the garden for the new girls. Cheedo marvelled at the great, turning racks of plants, and swirled her arms through the water sprays, laughing – a joy to see. I failed to pay attention to the Dag, and this was a failure indeed. By the time I turned to see, I found her strutting on the edge of a two-metre wall, waving down at the thronged Citadel courtyard, a vision in glimmering white from her pale hair to her feet.

The other girls were ahead of me. “Dag! Get down!” called Toast.

The Dag did not listen. “I like those War Boys. They’re chrome. I wish one of them had examined me instead of that Organic schlanger. Hey, they see me. They’re waving at me!”

I dropped my head to my hands.

I hadn’t even imagined that this could happen. “Don’t scale a vertiginous wall and flirt with War Boys in front of the entire Citadel” had never crossed my mind.

Of course, there are repercussions. Not physical ones. Word has been sent from the Immortan that we are forbidden the gardens. Us longer-term inmates exchanged unhappy glances, and I worried that, when we had the Immortan’s attention again, there would be further repercussions. “You new ones – you must work with us. You who have been here must share. You need to help each other and watch out for each other.”

Cheedo squirmed unhappily. “I thought it was going to be nice, being a Wife.”

“Nice isn’t the word,” said Toast.

“I want you to do one thing for me, my dears.” I had them sit, not in our row of tutoring chairs, but in a circle, holding hands, and each was told to say something they like about the woman on their left.

Angharad went first. “Capable, we’ve been friends for hundreds of days and I admire your good heart. Thank you."

“Toast, I like your intelligence and the way we talk together, sharing ideas.”

“Cheedo, I like how fun you are – it’s really nice.”

“Dag, I like you because I feel safe with you.”

“Angharad, I like you because you could take me in a fight. Those scars of yours are also awesome.”

All looked at each other. “Very nicely said. And me, I’m an old woman and I’m going to bed. You girls stay up and talk.” I dragged myself off and lay in my room, light off, as if I was asleep. The sound of not unhappy voices made this reality soon.

It’s beyond an old woman to force five very different people to all be friends together. It seems to have begun, nonetheless. They are, I fear, going to need this.

* * *

I write again another month later. The Immortan returned, with the full entourage. Despite being well forewarned, the experience curdled the Dag: her brazenness piqued the Immortan, and he enjoyed goading her. Loathsome as the Organic Mechanic is, he claimed Cheedo is too young yet for the breeding round. I hate his depressing ability to be right - and to be listened to.

Having five girls again keeps me busy. The Dag is currently exchanging decent behaviour for access to my needles and tattoo ink I make from lantern soot. To get her started, I had her tattoo all their names on me, in the “frame” I have set aside for my time here. When she is not perfecting designs for her hands on the blackboard, she seizes new words and warps them into her vocabulary. Cheedo is bright enough and wants to learn – just not reading and writing. They are both difficult and captivating, as young women have the right to be. Capable dives into any work I set them that has a creative twist and, as other Wives before her have, does more than a fair part to tutor the newer Wives.

Angharad, who used to do that as well, has gone troublingly quiet. She conceived from the Immortan’s last visit.

My worries are divided between her and Toast the Knowing. Toast is palpably bored. What I am providing is a tenth-form English class at best, and her mind thirsts for more. The Immortan is treating her particularly poorly in their sessions, reluctant to divest himself of her proven fertility, remembering our defiance. To divert her, I offered to help her reconfigure her garments, and she has chosen to be as covered as she can be from the waist up.

I remain Lumped.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Vault gains a guard - the troubling Imperator Furiosa.

It is rare that a Green Thumb tells me anything – we never get the same servitors for more than a day in a month– but today’s one said that they had been barring the Immortan’s son, Rictus, from coming through to the Vault door. He is unwholeseomely fascinated with the Wives, and has a one-track mind. I warned the Immortan when he came by to eye up his new Wives again and was told, “It will be dealt with.” I assumed that this meant some steps to make the mentally unfortunate man behave appropriately. You’d think I’d know by now.

The result was a much more permanent visitor: Immortan Joe’s sole female officer of rank, Imperator Furiosa. I last heard her name, tangled up in hyperbole and rumor, when I had news of the road war several oldweeks ago.

The Imperator is supposed to protect us. (For Valhalla forbid that the Immortan’s son is corrected!) She joined us late this afternoon, simply walking in, taking a chair, and posting herself by the Vault door. For all the rumors, she is about of a height with Angharad, with wiry muscles, a shaved head, and an absent expression. I place her on the latter cusp of her thirties. Under the Imperator’s black and the Citadel grime, her complexion has not yet collapsed under our hard sun, and she remains striking. Her left arm is missing from the elbow down, replaced with a complex mechanized prosthetic. The Immortan values her, if she is privileged with such technology.

Looks aside, the Imperator _smells_ like a Citadel man, petroleum and lived-in clothing. With my declining sight, I can ignore her shape in the shadows by the Vault door, but my nose keeps twitching, telling me to run. I’m seeing that ghostly War Pup out of the corner of my eye.

Upon her arrival, the girls scattered, understandably intimidated. It was left to me to billet the Imperator, and to offer her an evening meal, murmuring a few pleasantries about guests and hosts. Her responses are terse. Either she has never had to ask for or receive hospitality on the roads of the apocalypse, or she is used to slaves, and I speak above my station. Her few words have a cultivated note: most likely she is Citadel-bred, the daughter of one of the Immortan’s companions or allies. I know too well she is not the Immortan’s daughter.

She does know how to use a fork.

* * *

The Imperator has made it clear she wishes to be left to herself, and has settled into a routine: she takes to her post from mid-afternoon to dawn, and sleeps most of the day through. As a result, for once in our time here the girls are up when breakfast arrives and we spend the morning together. We haven’t played instruments since this guard arrived, but this morning’s lively run through of the better parts of _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ produced no noise complaints. (Angharad as Titania and the Dag as Bottom – too funny).

When the Imperator arises, the girls disperse to their separate spaces. Her presence near me has shut down their occasional night-time visits to my cell for soft, private conversations. Even the Green Thumbs have an air of suppressed terror when they enter.

Capable is the most disturbed by this woman soldier’s androgynous presence and thousand-yard stare, betrayed by her own eyes. Is this a crush? The Imperator has far too much power in here for me to be phlegmatic about this.

* * *

Seven days of our new guest. Last night was the 30th anniversary of the Kulurda raid and I braced myself and went ahead with the Kulurda Tell. The girls kindly pretended enthusiasm. My first time doing it in here – though the magic of a Tell is such that I forgot the walls around us, even the presence of the Imperator in the journey of grief and memory. By the time I remembered her, she had retired.

Relying on the girls’ late night, in the earliest morning, the Imperator had a visitor. Some Citadel man, Warboy white, with a mouth twisted to one side by a scar and aviator sunglasses. Using her Imperator’s privilege, she allowed him a peek inside (he gaped like a bogan getting a glimpse of Versailles.) Then she stepped out of the Vault to talk to him for a good half hour, and returned looking more present. Impossible things before breakfast!

My current hypothesis: despite the Green Thumbs’ tall tales, this Imperator was injured in the field in the recent road war, and the Immortan’s wish for better Vault security dovetailed with him having a female Imperator who needed light duty. Broken ribs? Concussion? Both, I think, if not more. She sleeps near half the clock round and sticks to a chair the other half. When I was her age, though I was the opposite of a warrior, I ran hard – all day and all night, if need be, to save my life.

****

As ever, when things are going passably in our confinement, the Immortan’s attempts at breeding undo any conviviality and set us all two steps back. The Imperator’s presence did not make a particularly difficult round any easier. Today, the girls are resentful at this extra humiliation and the Imperator is dead-eyed, despite her master’s approval of last night – another sign of humanity. So, naturally, it was _today_ that Capable decided to act on the multiple tensions of the Imperator’s presence and goad her. I could only listen to a little before I had to intervene, on behalf of Travis’ ghost, if nothing else. “Capable, come away.” I drew her into my cell.

Before I could warn her about the dangers of gravely insulting an underslept Imperator, she grabbed my hand and opened her beautiful, serious eyes wide. “Miss Giddy! _Please_ watch out. She’s been glaring daggers at you all day.” That stopped me cold.

I suppose I must have looked like some creaky old panderer, last night, preparing the girls for their ordeal.

I suppose I am.

* * *

The Imperator, presumably disliking both this post and what she sees in me, has remained remote. The girls grow frayed under this panopticon. I am at a loss. Worse, after another slimy visit from the Organic Mechanic, we had the first stamp of her boot, in the middle of the night. I was awoken by an unholy stoush from upstairs. The Imperator’s voice was ringing out and the girls were shrieking to be left alone. By the time I made it to the mezzanine, the Imperator was descending.

“What’s going on?” I asked. I klunked myself and the walker across the base of the stairs.

The Imperator loomed, all shadow with the light behind her. “She was hurting herself. The one the Immortan likes best.”

“Ah. I understand.” I shifted the walker. “I’ll make it up there in a moment, Imperator.”

“You’ve been letting this go on?”

“Angharad’s face is her own, Imperator, even if her body is not.”

“What’s her face got to do with it?”

We paused in mutual confusion, but our failure of a conversation was interrupted.

Angharad, hearing her name, appeared at the mezzanine stair. “What are you plotting about now? Leave me alone, you horrible old women! Don’t bother coming up! You’re both bags of nails!”

She whirled away, leaving me in shock and the Imperator with an actual expression on her face. I did what I would have done had I seen that look on the apocalypse’s roads: fell back in fear, and let her pass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My deepest gratitude to ssstrychnine for beta reading.
> 
> Some of Furiosa's POV at this time is in this story here: [The Tell.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4289331)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa takes down Rictus, and Miss Giddy discusses self-harm with Angharad.

Angharad’s outburst precipitated a solid period of withdrawal from everyone displeased. The girls are united in refusing me any further details, and I am, weakly, reluctant to rip their last shreds of privacy from them. Cheedo, distressed, has been placating and clings to me, and is finally reading smoothly – one good outcome. The Dag has become fascinated with Greek myth, and I encourage this. The starkness of the Greek classics appeals to me, now. Angharad takes armfuls of books up to her space and reads morning to night, repetitively.

I have had a gutsful – demonstratively so - a tight ache is starting to fill my lower right abdomen. The lump found by Organic an oldyear back has vanished into a more general swelling. Is this place killing me, or keeping me alive?

After last night, I can verify that our Imperator is keeping us alive and whole.

I had woken up and couldn’t sleep. A _haboob_ was swirling again, and the wind rang guilt in my ears. I lay in bed, palpitating my right side. Was it a little more swollen? Did it pain me anywhere in particular? Was this hypochondria and tension, or was my luck truly running out? My sweat smelled sickly. I heard a voice, a terse word, “No.”

I sat up. More words, indistinct. Something wasn’t right. I wrapped my dark top sheet around me, hiding white gown and hair, and limped out into the main room. There was a strange reddish light from the combination of the _haboob_ and a full moon. The Imperator had raised her voice against the wind’s howl. “I said, no. You can’t come in.”

“Can...so.” The deep rumble and childish diction of Rictus. With the storm, all the Green Thumbs were busy protecting the gardens. Rictus and his ill intent had made it to the Vault door.

I looked around. What was I going to do? Give the man-mountain the bash with my walker? And if our guard was still recovering from the road war, would she survive herself?

I heard Imperator boots scrabble against the stone in the dark entry. She did not have the weight or leverage to hold the Vault door. After giving the door a final grunting shove, she sprang away, and Rictus sprawled in, wide torso bare and pale. Grunting himself, he picked himself up and spread his massive arms, ready to roar. The child-man towered over the tall Imperator by nearly a half metre.

She doubled over and cannonballed into his gut, leading with her right shoulder. Rictus made an inchoate noise, grabbed her waist, and pitched her down. I saw their silhouettes: against his raw bulk, she seemed, for a moment, a slender dancer.

She took the throw rolling and transferred the momentum to spin forwards and bounce back at him. He caught her again, but she smacked the artificial arm across his eyes, then clawed in towards his torso. Rictus growled obscenities. I heard something rip.

Suddenly, Rictus choked off. In silhouette, I saw she had a hand just so on his windpipe or some nerve. The titan fell to his knees.

Furiosa got in behind. Getting him into a throttle with her good arm, she let him lash, rocked with it, and emphasized it once more to bash his head against the floor. Once, twice, three times. With Rictus now on all fours, shaking his head, she whipped around front and planted a solid kick against his face.

Surrendering, he lowered his head, moaning like a calf. I could hear the Imperator’s merciless hiss. “Get. Out. Stay out of here. Stay away from the Milking Mothers. Or I will rip out your throat and tear off your balls. Understand, fool?”

He blubbered, then crawled into the dark of the Vault doorway.

“Get out. Get out. GET OUT.” She went for another kick, but Rictus was gone. Furiosa darted through the door behind him. There was the click-click-click of the handle given a spin, a mild thump, and the sound of the vault seal.

She was still breathing hard, staring at the door, when I cleared my throat and let the dark sheet drop. She whipped around. There was a pale, paired flash of exposed flesh between her legs: her inner thigh seams had split open.

I felt our lives had their price, too, easy for me to pay. “Imperator. Your trousers. I’ll fix them for you.” It was the last thing she expected. She looked down, clenched her teeth, and came to me.

My cell had my reading light, and I beckoned her in, well aware that my room smelled like a sick old woman. I offered the dark top sheet, and she wrapped it around herself. Her left leg, glimpsed briefly, was seamed with angry scars. With my sewing kit, I was able to restitch the leather through the previous thread holes, holding it inches from my nose. The material smelled of guzzoline and dried blood.

She chose to stay while I worked. Furiosa removed her metal arm – the first time I had seen her do this – and examined it in my room’s decent light. Eventually, I handed over the repaired garment, and she slid the trousers, then her boots, back on. She checked my handiwork with a test squat, and nodded.

I took a deep breath and seized my one chance to be a person, not a slave. “Thank you for what you just did. For speaking up for the women who aren’t even here. I did not wish to be here. But I cannot leave those girls to go through this by themselves. I try to help them. This is a hard place.”      

She replied, obliquely. “You don’t have to wait on me.” Her voice was surprisingly light.

“The Vault requires a certain pragmatism. Allow me my dignity in treating you as our guest.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then, she said, “The way you talk. Are you a hundred thousand days old?”

I snorted. “Is that what they’re saying? I’m seventy-two oldyears. Twenty-six thousand days. How am I still here? I had friends and we stayed together. I was taken to be here on a day when I was alone.”

“They took you,” she said. “Even you.”

“Yes. Not so long ago, either. The Immortan must be desperate, to put me to use. A chatterbox bag of bones.” I stopped myself, on the brink of spiralling out into verbosity.

She spoke again, slowly, her adrenaline draining away. “We’re locked in now. In the morning, I’ll need to go out. Talk to some people. I don’t know if I will come back.”

“I hear, Imperator. A moment.” I threaded the needle again, knotted the thread, and made it a bundle with a piece of white fabric. “In case you need more mending, and are gone. In thanks.” (For I attempted many bribes in my early days here.)

Furiosa tucked the small bundle into one of her boots, scooped up her prosthetic, and left. I heard her boots tap to the great window and the spectacle of the lightning-streaked _haboob_ , rolling red and black around the moon. Drained myself, I let Furiosa have the storm.

I heard the flutter outside when the morning servants arrived, followed by some even words from Furiosa, and her departure. I had some morning moments to consider that Furiosa is the only person of power in this Citadel who has given me the grace of telling me what might happen.

Shortly, the soft patter of bare feet came down from the mezzanine. I lay still. At my cell, someone pulled the curtain back and tiptoed in, then leaned over me to peer. I opened my eyes, making Angharad gasp and start. “You’re all right!”

“Why shouldn’t I be? Us bags of nails are tough, you know.”

“I thought I heard something last night… but you’re all right.” Her nostrils flared, and she looked around for someone absent. “Did _she_ give you a hard time?”

I demurred, uncertain how much to reveal. “Quite the contrary – we had a passable conversation, for once. She’s simply…doing her job. And a bit extra.”

Angharad drew in her brows. “Don’t you get on her side, too. Capable keeps wanting to talk to her. I don’t like being spied on.”

“I didn’t say anything about any of you, dear. I’m no fool. I’m just glad you and I are speaking again.”

I saw blood on her face, held close to mine. “Angharad. Dearest. You’ve cut yourself again. Why? Can you tell me?”

She sat beside me on my cot, and looked at her clenched hands. “I always hated what I have to do here. It stays with me, under my skin. The cutting made it better – but not since I’m pregnant.” She took a short breath. “I know I shouldn’t. I know it makes a difference for everyone here, when he’s pleased with me. I want to be free. I want to live. For me. And for this child, if I have it. Looks like I will.”

I levered up and placed a hand over hers. “There is no shame in wanting to live. None. It’s human.”

“You can live out there, yes? You were on the ground, and you weren’t maggot food!”

Her crude phrase alarmed me. “It is very, very hard, but yes.”

Angharad knit her fingers into mine. “I know I cannot have what I want. I’m trapped here, now.”

“I admire you, my dear, for wanting it. Do you think you might make Capable want to live, too? I worry about her, and the desert walk.”

“Oh, Miss Giddy.” She wrapped her warm arms around my old bones. “I can try.” She left, still lissom at three oldmonths with child, buoyed up by the thought of caring for her dearest friend.

It struck me that Capable was seeking life and freedom where it stood – in the sole free woman among us, Furiosa. Free, that is, as in free to come and go, bound here only by duty or promise of reward, not by force.

Furiosa returned late that afternoon, forehead shadowed, freshly buzz-cut, mechanical arm _in situ._ An ideal Imperator. Unlike before, she met my eyes and gave me a nod. Then, she took up the space by the door again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My deep gratitude to ssstrychnine for beta reading.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is Furiosa a spy for the Immortan, or not? There’s a way to find out: with an "Aggravate the Immortan" curriculum for the Wives.

The girls, who miss nothing, have picked up on the détente and fragments of acknowledgement between the Imperator and myself. After oldweeks of the Vault’s food and light duty, Furiosa herself is looking less the Nightmare Life-in-Death and more thoroughly present. Either the petroleum ferment has faded or we’ve gotten used to it; a literal clearing of the air.

For absolutely no reason but her own innate sweetness and kindness, Cheedo bravely offered her a cup of tea this afternoon. Cheedo’s charm is such that Furiosa found herself in a brief, civil conversation with several of us before she remembered herself and withdrew. (In this short exchange, I learned that she is not Citadel-bred after all.)

Angharad’s directness has given me one way to act. Are we spied on, as she suspects? I have my doubts after Furiosa sat through the Kulurda Tell without sending me down to Organic’s dissection table. She is doing the minimum of the job given her by the Immortan – and for whatever private reason, not a drop of chrome more. I need to be sure of this, but without risking the girls. We are days out from another breeding visitation from the Immortan. I am putting into place a special Aggravate the Immortan curriculum, in the afternoons.

* * *

The past seven days have been amongst my most taxing here. I began my curriculum slowly, with something that blended in to what we often discussed. “This is a wonderful Greek play called _Lysistrata._ Dag, I believe you will like this, particularly.”

Then, women’s poetry, but different women. “Herr God, Herr Lucifer. Beware. Beware. Out of the grave I rise with my red hair. And I eat men like air.”

Which led into cruel essentials of history. “The Nazis created appealing spectacles that entertained people who were suffering. Their officers had attractive uniforms that made them look powerful. And one of the chief sources of their authority and evil was exclusion and discrimination. But that made many people feel good about themselves. Toast, I see your hand. I haven’t forgotten about Plath’s lampshade references, this is all getting there.”

More history. “One factor that led to the End of the World was one nation’s leader, Vladimir Putin, being unwilling to negotiate with the leader of another nation, Hillary Clinton – just because she was a woman.”

And the science that follows on from that tragic history. “So, after the nuclear winter and nuclear summer, we are now waiting out a climate crash that might lead to human – dearest, don’t cry. The world may not be dead just yet. Let’s take a break, shall we?” I cheered them up with my treasonous capstone, a guided conversation with the theme “If I Ruled The Citadel.”

All of this exhausted me, because the girls wanted to talk until late into the night and I find my gut craves sleep. I forced myself on. This was the level of discourse Toast, Angharad, and Capable thirsted for, and the Dag ran to catch up, while Cheedo followed, in her way. (Loved “If I Ruled.”) They were going through one of their phases of being a unified pack, and I could not win a word with any of them alone.

Furiosa showed little change during the afternoons. At night, after we retired, there was a difference: she came to life and paced endlessly, evoking all the clichés about chained predators. Furiosa will be seeing the Immortan when we are. There’s always a word on the side. If she wants to get rid of the old panderer, she has her chance – tonight.

Girls, I’m leaving this journal on my pillow. If I’m disappeared, you know what has happened and you know you must guard yourselves tightly. It was worth it for you to learn and to extend your own lives. I love you all.

* * *

Still here! Another breeding charade survived by everyone important. I dodged attending Organic’s medical charivari, this once, to listen without watching, a shadow with no words, on the mezzanine stair. This is close above the entrance, where the Immortan consulted with the Imperator, stolid at her post.

“How is Angharad?”

“Ask Organic.”

His voice lowered. I was sure he asked, “And Giddy?”

Furiosa snorted. “Chatterbox bag of bones. No trouble.”

The Immortan chuckled richly. “Sounds like she’s learned, then. Would that all who serve were as obedient and of few words as you.” _Oh, yes, Immortan_ , I thought. _I have learned many things this week._ I was left unmolested on the mezzanine stair, where the girls found me, one by one.

So. Furiosa hears what I say; is not out for petty power during her Vault sojourn; and accepted a stab of an insult from the Immortan as part of her duty. Ambivalence remains. Nevertheless, she is the one aperture we have, and I need to see how far she might open. For Angharad and Capable’s sanity, for Toast’s yearning soul, for the other girls’ possibilities.

The next night, I approached Furiosa during her vigil. Where my heart quailed, my aching liver urged me on. The lost Chinese used to say that our soul was based in the liver, not the heart, and maybe they are right. “I need to ask you a question, Imperator. The Wives are fine young women, full lives, with strong minds. But something is missing. Don’t you think?”

Furiosa replied, “Speak plainly. What do you want?”

“You are an Imperator. Can there be a future for them, when the Immortan is done with them, outside the Milking Room? Before the Wretched? Is there any hope?” I took a breath. “Can you make it so?”

She was silent.

“Perhaps talk with them. Observe? I can await your judgement.”

I received another of those hard-won nods. With an acknowledging gesture, I withdrew. In my nigh-sleepless night that followed, I heard her resume her pacing.

In this world of slow Wasteland tongues and hard Wasteland hearts, I know this is a success. A beginning. I wish I felt it, in my own sad old organs, and that I had a clean, living ocean of patience to await the results.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Nightmare Life-in-Death = “Her skin was as white as leprosy, the Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she, who thicks man's blood with cold.” Coleridge’s _Rime of the Ancient Mariner_. http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Coleridge/the_rime_of_the_ancient_mariner.htm
> 
>  _Lysistrata_ – Ancient Greek comedy about women seeking to end a war by withholding sex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysistrata 
> 
> Herr God, Herr Lucifer, beware – From the poem _Lady Lazarus_ by Sylvia Plath. http://www.sylviaplathforum.com/ll.html


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa and the Wives connect, Miss Giddy contemplates their evolving language, and it becomes cruelly clear that life in the Vault is war.

The Imperator dares to eat a peach.

It is one thing for an old woman to mutter in the middle of the night, and another to engage with sunlit youth and charm. The girls and Furiosa exist to each other, now: Furiosa moves amongst them, joins us when there is food, sits on the floor. This afternoon, she ate a peach from one of our espaliered trees while Cheedo, with the authority of innocence, interrogated her about her mother. When she let Cheedo rest a hand on her right shoulder in sympathy after some word I did not hear, I knew that the connections made between Furiosa and the Wives were sound, and I sharpened this pencil.

Angharad, under Furiosa’s regard, first feinted against authority with defiant words about remaining with her child (as Toast was not able to do) and living freely. She has solved Furiosa’s mystery with Occam’s razor. “Were you once a Wife?” She spoke daringly, with her eye on Capable.

Much about this Imperator falls into place. I am grateful Angharad did not press for Furiosa’s story. If she was cast out after being a Wife, she must have made some devil’s deals to survive, let alone rise to Imperator. (I think of the ground outside, hungry for young bodies. The raids. The reek and bribes and blood in the Citadel beneath us. The two-tanker explosion that opened the gates of Valhalla. ) For the sake of a future for the girls, I need Furiosa too much to risk any qualms. 

The girls are hungry for the Citadel’s one kindness from this authority amongst them: being Witnessed. They proffer Furiosa apologies, tidbits, their hopes. Furiosa remains quiet, a listening quiet. Her regard has an unexpectedly deft parental touch, honed amongst the lads and Pups below, and her encouraging words are given value by their rarity. She seems to see their worth. Capable was luminous for days after a word of praise. The girls, in their turn, value the distance in her: in this over-intimate hothouse of a Vault, her coolness is a relief.

Imitating Furiosa’s speech, instead of mine, the girls become – not terse, but edited. Elemental. They take it further than either of us older women by speaking from their hearts. _I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each._ In my long journey I have heard many tongues of the apocalypse, language corrupted, slurred, forgotten from disuse. The way the girls talk around Furiosa would be a good language for the future.

Seeing the girls grow and change for the better, and our warden regain some humanity, is the closest thing to a respite I’ve had here. I am yesterday’s news, the teacher of last year’s form, the wireless from yesteryear broadcasting into outer space. It’s lonely and it’s freeing. I read my arms and legs, recalling old times and lost friends. If I’m a newspaper, the news isn’t good: the parchment of my skin has the slightest yellow note. I’m soaking up sleep while I can. In the Vault, disturbances are inevitable.

* * *

Writing again, at dawn. Where to begin?

I have not remarked before on the Wives’ strange preparations when they know the Immortan is coming. The Immortan likes the girls pale with powder, enhanced with soot or a swipe of hoarded, rancid lipstick. Is he recreating Goth girls of the Before-time who once sneered at a chubby boy? The result is both beautiful and eerily like the War Boys – like raid ghosts – like the Immortan himself, also lightened and darkened.

Tonight, the Immortan came early, in the mood for entertainment. We had been warned by a too-enthused Organic. Prepared, the girls sang and played, one of the old Greek songs from Girls’ Presbyterian I had taught them.

Furiosa, in her new engagement, glared at Organic when he came in with the Immortan. This was a mistake. Organic, already in a filthy, gleeful mood, eyed her in turn. “Looking well fit there, Imperator. You’ll be having your boots licked again in no time.” By now I knew Furiosa enough to discern her anger, in a flared nostril and the click of her prosthetic adjusting to muscle tension. I also knew that Organic taunted with the truth: we might soon lose our healed guard to other duties.

Organic’s louche aside led me to contemplate that, out there in the Wasteland, probably even in this very Citadel, there were people who would comply with the Immortan’s voyeurism and games, not needing any force. For a price, or even with an anarchic surrender to every desire in the face of the world’s death. So why inflict them on these imprisoned girls? There were a thousand parentless sons in the Wasteland. So why not choose the most perfect of them and declare him son and heir?

The girls sang on in between my murmured translations. Despite the purity of their voices, and their song urging life, Organic’s perverse cruelty was contagious. The Immortan moved to begin immediately, with an unctuous invitation to Cheedo.

Immediately, the Dag flung herself at him like a human Molotov cocktail. “Get your filthy hands off her! She’s the only thing here not infected with your poison!” Too late, she learned that there was still a strong man under the Immortan’s flab and tumors. He had seized her and dragged her to the mezzanine, the girls’ refuge, before I could blink.

Swift Furiosa had moved, but to block the girls from following. “There’s four of you to one of her.” Tribe strategy, that I remembered from my road years – sometimes one suffered to shield the others. I meant to nod, but the sound of violence froze me. The Imperator (the former wife?) added, “He won’t kill her.” I stood there listening to what the road had spared me: a girl fierce and  beloved as if she was my child, suffering. Her voice pierced me like a siren, and brought me memories and answers.

The Immortan could not undo the death of his world, the nuclear strikes, the unmanning poisoning of his body. Instead, he sought to embody it. Nothing else would do but that he became the Destroyer of Worlds. Whatever we tried, our failure was ordained in his madness and the trap that tightened around us.

Angharad, the only Wife whose skin was warm, unpowdered, said, “Miss Giddy, get something to wrap the Dag in, and something in case there’s blood. I’ll see if I can’t calm him, soon.”

Toast added, “Cheedo, you get behind me. He hasn’t liked me for a while, he’ll go for me first.”

“You’re a crew.” We all turned at these unexpected words from Furiosa.

“We are fighting to live,” said Angharad, meeting her eyes. Something electric unified the two women. They took the front, and Capable joined them, with Toast shielding Cheedo and myself. Organic had slunk to the door and been let out. We would not be. A sudden silence fell.

Braced for more violence, we received, instead, a rant from the Immortan about the Wives’ ingratitude. I was listed along with the food and water as one of the freedoms they ostensibly have. It hit me in my gut that nobody has ever cared at all what I teach in here, as long as it keeps the girls from being discarded before their time. I might as well have been a television. The Immortan was so angry (and so satisfied) that he progressed out immediately afterwards. Furiosa let him pass, arm ticking, Imperator’s black sliding down her sweating face.

The moment the Vault door sealed, our unity was shattered. The Dag, looking more like her namesake than she ever had, wanted none of me, nor of Cheedo. She submitted to the pack and was swept away to Toast’s inviolate room downstairs, where they used to pile up on several cots jammed together. Furiosa retreated to her old station by the Vault door in her old silence. Not expecting sleep, I went over to the great window.

I thought about the changes I had tried to make in here, the connections that seemed shattered, the unconquerable corruptness of the Immortan. Failure upon failure, fear upon fear. To my dim eyes, Furiosa was barely a shadow. Another fragment of Eliot stuck in my mind:

_And would it have been worth it, after all?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Dare to eat a peach/I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each/And would it have been worth it, after all?_ Miss Giddy has T.S. Eliot’s poem _The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock_ on her mind.
> 
>  _Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds_ – Quote from the Bhagvad Gita appropriated by nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This morning, Furiosa, after a day and a night of silent brooding, exploded like her former tanker."

The past two days have been a series of bewildering about-faces inside this prison of a Vault. In the aftermath of the Dag’s rebellion and rape, the Dag told us all to leave her alone; Angharad ranted; Toast was grim with an I-told-you-so undertone; Capable rose to the occasion to balance out Angharad and reassure the shattered Cheedo. I was no exemplar, finding myself pressed up against the window in an escapist discussion of geology, and almost everyone flattened against the glass with me. This morning, Furiosa, after a day and a night of silent brooding, exploded like her former tanker.

Oh, Furiosa, stone as you are now, you _were_ a Wife. I recognize that light of charisma. She stood up after breakfast (we are still fed, which is something) and compelled us to listen with a few words.

Furiosa told us of the Green Place of her origin, of the Land of Many Mothers.

(I kept my thoughts and questions to myself through her rare speech. It sounds like the Green Place was artisanal permaculture types or weed growers gone fully tribal. East of here? Hammersley Range rainshadow? Very likely in the national park, that used to be, or a tourist service townlet near there.)

Of her elaborate tribal affiliation.

(Vuvalini???? ????)

Of her being taken, and her life here for seven thousand days.

(She must have been Cheedo’s age, when she was abducted.)

She admitted that she has failed to return before, and is not even certain the Green Place remains.

(Realistic, considering the climate and the roads.)

The girls were electrified. They begged for more.

(I have traveled on this amount of information.)

In her brusque way – “It won’t be easy” - she made an offer beyond my hopes: to spirit them away from the Citadel to the Green Place.

(My heart cried: YES. _Bingo._ )

Toast’s flat voice cut through the resulting chatter. “If we can go, let’s just go. I’ve had enough death in here. No unnecessary killing.”

Furiosa frowned. “Some will be.”

“Only that!” said Capable. Furiosa gave one of her slow nods.

Angharad stood up. “Are you going to tell anybody about this?”

“I can’t,” said Furiosa.

Angharad nodded herself, satisfied.

(I recalled the War-man who had visited us briefly, and felt a pang on our warrior’s behalf. Who is the most ruthless of us now?)

We barely had an hour of joy before the Vault door popped outside its time. The girls clustered around the pool, as they were supposed to by protocol. The words “Blessed Immortan” stayed unsaid in the horror of his return, with his idiotic son Rictus, arms loaded with new metal,  and the Organic Mechanic.

The tall fool flinched to see Furiosa, and cast down his dreadful burden. “What are they?” whimpered Cheedo.

“Chastity belts,” I replied. Ghastly objects, metal and cannibal’s leather, adorned with shark’s teeth, the Immortan’s despise of what he needs made physical.

Far worse, the day Organic anticipated came down like an axe. While we reeled at the torture implements before us, the Immortan dismissed Furiosa from the Vault. He did it offhandedly: saying that she was done amongst us, that her new Rig was ready, and to go pick some crew members. I discerned a flash of joy before she locked her soul down and turned her back on our shame, to leave without a word.

How easily the Immortan has this human weapon in his holster again. Furiosa has the freedom and rank of the Citadel and its roads once more. She has the health of her prime restored. She can do what she likes. If she regrets her words here, she can crush us. The Immortan’s urge to destroy is overdue in my direction.

After seeing, through me, what age brings to a woman in this world, Valhalla may even beckon.

And the girls – the Wives?

In my months here I have tried to help them have some agency, to help them come together as friends and tribe for their survival, to stay sane. And now I am trying to help them not be mere breeding chattel– when that is the case. I can no longer deny the language of the Citadel. The bar sinks lower and lower for what we are: disvalued possessions, necessary things.

I remain here with five women, dreamers, fighters, people, who are treated worse than I have treated breeding cattle.

And a bleeding gut of my own.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An instrument arrives to help the Vault inmates face the music.

Depression and anger have reigned since Immortan Joe’s last departure, thirteen days ago. The chastity belts are a physical nightmare, an offense against these young bodies, like the Immortan’s hand upon them constantly. Every last scrap of fabric here is pressed into service for hygiene.

The girls are starting to emerge from their state of shock. The Dag lashed out at me late yesterday, long overdue after her suffering. “What’s the matter, old bitch? Aren’t you supposed to be cheering us up?”

Her goad was what I needed to pull myself together. “Misery is a perfectly sane response to recent events and being forced to wear rape axes. Tell me: what else is?” And we talked. There was too much whingeing and our talk started too late to say it was a good teaching day, as a rule. But teaching and healing are different, and I'll take what we had as better than silence. The sadness in here drags at my body.

What happened this morning has given me enough heart to write.

I had breakfast brought in to an unattended pool. About an hour later, with the food still undisturbed, I was wary when the guards summoned me again. A lanky War Pup stood in the Vault door. He carried a didgeridoo, of all things, with some of the Aboriginal paintwork still clinging to its hollow wood. The didgeridoo was long enough for him to lean as he held it, claiming it was a gift from the Immortan.

In the Before-time, we once debated whether a woman might handle a didgeridoo, or play its haunting music. But needs must, and I suspected this came from a woman who did many forbidden things. I took it – and my arms swayed at its unexpected weight. Propping it up on the wall, I thanked the Pup and gave him a handful of apricots from the girls’ neglected feast.

I could hear the girls rousing at last, so I shuffled this strange gift into my cell. It gave up its secrets easily. The broad end of the didgeridoo was packed tight with greasy rags. When I plucked them away, the blind muzzle of a gun peered out. I managed to tilt it onto my cot. It was more than half my height, a stockman’s rifle – the kind used on the lost Outback farming stations. The kind I might, not unreasonably, have shot, once upon a time. Around its middle was wrapped a piece of more recently white fabric.

I teased this open and found the fabric was marked three times. There were three black smudged words, essentials only. SOON – GUARD - LOADED. Below this was a doubled black thread, stitched roughly through the fabric a few times, with a needle hanging from it.

Furiosa has chosen her crew.

My chipper mood today has annoyed the girls no end. Capable lost her temper and tore a strip off of me for talking about not wasting food and keeping up their strength. To keep the peace, most of them ate, and inevitably their spirits rose a trifle. I left them to their talk afterwards. The Dag finally let down her walls to reveal sadness and fear. She is convinced she is pregnant, and, well, it is her body. Led by Angharad, they supported her, and each other.

I would like nothing more than to tell them. Yet, if the Immortan returns, I don’t know who might break for the sake of freedom from a rape axe. So I have hidden the digeridoo’s secret as best I can, and I reserve my energy for when I will need it.

Everything around me is getting pared to its essentials, like a Greek myth. Down to the primal shadows on the cave walls, the fire that casts them, the dream of true sunlight outside the cave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Down to the primal shadows on the cave walls_ \- A reference to Plato’s Parable of the Cave.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa extracts the Wives from the Vault – and Miss Giddy prepares to pay the travelers’ toll.

I am writing six days later, in the first light of dawn. It happened in the heart of the night. A strange noise penetrated my sleep, then I heard the Vault door swinging open. My heart was in my mouth – until Furiosa peered through my curtain. She had induced the night guards to open the Vault, killed them with a silenced pistol, and come to spirit the girls away.

Angharad and Capable insisted on painting messages for our keepers before they left, using their white body cosmetics, and the Dag flew to join them. My heart swelled when they wanted their first free act to be writing. Furiosa clenched her teeth more than once in impatience, but allowed them the minutes. I do believe she and Toast shared an exasperated look. I urged them to drag the dead guards in: there was no way I could move them. Furiosa had brought the concealing gear of the Green Thumbs for the girls, and this, I could bring inside.

Furiosa and I stood together in the darkness, briefly. I felt my skin crawling with questions. _What have you prepared?_ _Which way will you go? Have you got all the supplies you'll need?_ _Tell me more about your Vuvalini?_   Knowing her, and feeling the press of time, I allowed myself just one. “Furiosa. Why?”

“Revenge. Hope. It’s time…” She raised her voice to address the girls. “It’s time.” The girls scrambled into Green Thumb wraps, hats, and masks.

My dearest Toast, falling in immediately.

The Dag, grinning wildly as she pulled on my terrible old boots.

Capable, holding both my hands, consoling me even as she let me go.

Poor sweet Cheedo, hugging me so, her tears.

Angharad simply shining with joy.

Furiosa asked if I was sure about not leaving with them. I claimed the obvious, my frailty (hiding the private hopes I had formed), promised to delay the inevitable discovery of the Wives' absence, and reminded her that she had armed me. On no account should they ever, ever return. She nodded and lifted a hand to me, with a short fierce smile, then stepped out. The girls followed. Glimpses of their beauty flashing out, like disguised Greek goddesses. Holding each other’s hands, like the lovers and fighters in the Theban band of courage. Talking more than they should, like excited young women, to be hushed and swept away.

Leaving as a tribe – what they will need to be, to survive the apocalypse’s roads.

I judge them more ready for the road than Furiosa allows. They could never be prepared – I certainly wasn’t – but not all the chaos of travel in our broken world is negative. Far better than what awaits if they remain.

Furiosa needs them as much as they need her, and not just to bleed the Immortan for her uprooted life. Through the girls, she enacts the rescue she, herself, needed long ago. With them, she can return to her Many Mothers aged, darkened, mechanized, fighter and killer, for the sake of being their shield. Let her find out what I know: how many selves one woman can have, and how long life can be.

Their descent’s beginning seems to have been successful. I’ve just come in from scrubbing away the blood outside, and all was quiet. I find I don’t mind the whump of the Vault door half as much when I’m the one letting it swing closed, or the company of the dead guards.

Dawn is full now. There’s a sliver of a chance I might end today with the honest sand of the Wretched underneath my feet again, telling my own tribesman Alan all about this madness (if he lives? if he’s there?), and planning my exit, on my own terms. I’d love to go the way Travis did, when it’s time.

In the meantime, I need to bluff through bringing breakfast in and keeping everyone else out as long as I can. An hour or two might make all the difference. And when someone enters?

The didgeridoo’s secret is at the ready for some music. While I _might_ have fired a stockman’s rifle, with my bad eyesight, nobody sensible ever gave me one, in all this apocalypse. What a hell of a time to start. May close quarters make the difference. Let’s hope I’m worthy of our personal Fury’s benediction, and that my remaining here pays their toll to Charon – to the living side of the Styx.

Too excited to write much more – hands shaking. Will the Immortan come in? I rather hope he does. No time to ink my trigger finger with his name, unfortunately. Who has sown the wind to reap the whirlwind this time – him, or I? Perhaps it will be vile Organic who walks in. I’m planning separate speeches for each of them, before I fire. Both of them need to hear:

NONE OF US ARE THINGS.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toast, Capable, the Dag, and Cheedo close Miss Giddy’s book and claim the story of the Vault for their own voices.

The four remaining former Wives had read the journal aloud to each other, starting after the evening meal, under the grape pergola in the Citadel's high gardens. Halfway through, the worshipful Green Thumbs had brought them lanterns.

Toast had been the last one reading aloud. Capable was sitting beside her, one arm intertwined with an arm of Toast’s, a dictionary tucked in her other elbow, slow tears falling.

Cheedo, crying as well, turned from one to the other. “I thought she loved us! She said I was stupid. She said you were crazy, Dag. She thought Furiosa traitored us!”

Toast said, “She just said you were having a hard time. And, okay, when Furiosa left, we all thought she’d….” Toast swiped her own eyes. “I wish I could tell Miss Giddy how it all turned out. What it’s like for us now. I wish she’d just shot Joe, instead of wanting to make a big speech.”

The Dag murmured, “Veneer of bitchy madness. Molotov cocktail. She made me sound brave. Like I won instead of Joe. I know how that turned out.” She rested a fist against her pregnant belly.

Capable leaned over and took Cheedo’s hands. “I think she was just talking to herself when she wrote. She loved all of us – she said so. Even when we were stupid, or bitchy, or crazy. It’s why she didn’t tell us she was getting sick, even when we could see. You remember how she had to use the walker, more and more, even when her knees weren’t so bad.”

“Furiosa asked me to pick out the most important parts and tell her,” said Toast, wearily ruffling the pages of the small book. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

The Dag looked around, eyes tight with anger. “What about that old History Man who gave Miss Giddy’s book to Furiosa? _He’s_ read it.”

Cheedo crumpled again. “I don’t want him to know all that.”

“Too late now,” said Toast.

Capable said, “He’s the one who tattooed half of Miss Giddy. They were out in the Wasteland for thousands of days, as tribe. We could ask him to tell us more. And… we can tell him what parts of the journal are our story first, for us to tell ourselves, when we’re ready. Like Miss Giddy and her own Tells.”

“How do we know he’ll listen? He’s a man,” spat the Dag.

Toast cleared her throat. “I think he’ll listen. First, it’s our Citadel now, it’s our turn. Plus, there’s something extra, in the back of the book. He could’ve kept it, but he didn’t.”

“More writing?”

“No, things. Look.” Everyone scrambled forwards to see the oddments.

There was a battered little plastic card, half a photograph, half printed with words: the History Woman’s name from long ago, and her oldyear birth date, and more. For the moment, the picture was all. “She’s so young,” Cheedo breathed. “She’s painted her lips, like I like to do. What’s she wearing on her eyes?” She handed the card around.

Capable got the card last and said, “Eyeglasses. Goggles that make everything clear. She always said Angharad should have some.”

“What’s the other thing?”

The Dag snatched it up. “Her needles!” She flicked open the tiny, ink-stained paper packet. Six needles remained. The eye of the largest one still held an inch of the black thread shared by the History Woman and Furiosa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! This was my fanfiction attempt to reframe the canon in the clumsy/undermined-by-the-comic-author's-sexism Furiosa comic as this wonderful fandom deserves. With more mature dialogue, more sensible plotting, and most of all, women’s experiences, POVs, and voices. See you all in the Wasteland...


End file.
